time heals
by daggers.silver
Summary: he doesn't mean to fall. though, that's sort of the definition of falling.


**A/N:** **yay improvised fic titles!**

 **anyways god made 3x05 for ME and now i made this for you uwu ! even though it's 1am ! and i definitely wanna write more and (HOPEFULLY) will, but i wanted this to be a single scene sort of thing and i wanted to post something toniGHT before crashing so! here this mess is! i love my son archibald andrews himself, yada yada, y'all heard it all from me before, but pls give him all the hugs in the world and never let him out of his dad's sight ever again thanks**

 **takes place in Season 3 Episode 5, beginning as Archie drops down into the bunker and ending where Toni finishes patching him up**

 **spoilers, as evident**

 **rated t for blood, injury, idk STAB WOUNDS, language, some vague almost anxiety attacks and/or references to trauma? etc**

 **no song lyrics this time omg i think my first? wig**

000

he doesn't mean to fall.

though, that's sort of the definition of falling.

he thinks of when he was twelve, all thin and wiry, bones sharp at his elbows and knees and joints and wholly unprepared to absorb the shock of falling from ten feet up out of an oak tree at the park. he remembers the rush and the blur, the world reduced to colorless smears as his heart lept in his throat with the sound of the tree branch breaking. hitting the ground felt a lot like getting punched in the gut, and he knew what that felt like thanks to his fair share of brutes and bullies trying to pick on Jughead or Betty for nothing more than simply breathing the same air.

this time, hitting the ground feels a lot like getting stabbed again.

 _again –_

it washes over his skin in pins and needles and hot coals lodged tight in his ribs like steel knuckles. for a moment, he can't even fucking _breathe_ past it, the sensation digging itself into his stomach like a hooked talon, pushing and pulling, _breathe,_ in through his nose, his mouth, breathe in the stars painting the cement walls around him until the talon pulls back out of his flesh to drain.

for a moment, he thinks he might throw up.

for a moment, he just fucking _breathes,_ in through whatever pathway will take oxygen to his lungs the fastest, and the voices echoing down at him from above sound more like bees or running water in his ears, swimming, like the people to his left, just swimming, pulsating, throbbing in time with his heartbeat, but someone's coming closer and it takes a moment for him to realize it's _Jughead,_ arms light and hesitant but enough for him to sink into, press his face into as if he can dive away from all the sounds, sights, smells, _pain, jesus christ –_

"i got you, Arch, i got you, you're safe, you're okay – _Toni_ –" his light hold hardens to heavy just in time for the last drops of adrenaline to bleed out into the now-unrecognizable gray of Archie's shirt, like a piece of him knows he can relax now, _exhale,_ but heavy turns into something heavier and biting and he chokes on the breath washing out of him.

"gotta stay awake, bud, we need you up," Jughead, again, right in his ear, breath hot, _too hot, everything's too hot,_ and the flames lick too close to his throat, tasting of acid and blood and he spats it on the floor before the poison gets on anyone else. something like the acid burns in his eyes.

"shit, _Archie,_ " someone, someone else, but –

"where's he bleeding from?"

"his side, right – _here,_ " pressure, odd and soft and _hot,_ over top of his own hands, and he spots blonde waves. "sorry, sorry."

he's not sure what she's apologizing for until he realizes the low rasping wheeze of air is coming out of his own mouth instead of the depths of whatever cave he's landed himself in. it smells, _tastes,_ like cement, dust, must, like dirt and dust and vanilla candles – and he almost throws up again, but he hiccups, coughs, chokes it down, keep it down, near his hands, fisted tight in his shirt at this point as if the increased grip will lessen the sharp clarity of it, _it, everything._

"hurts –" he starts, but he's not sure what he's trying to say beyond that other than _help, please,_ before he does something like throw up again. " _fuck,_ it didn't hurt this bad before." he can barely breathe through it, thick and heavy and smothering like the humidity he had to deal with when he visited his childhood pen pal down in Florida for the first time except _he can barely fucking breathe through it._

"adrenaline?" someone asks; there're so many voices, _too_ many for his muddled mind to keep track of.

"most likely," a new voice, softer but firm and close, and more hands grab at his own.

almost against his will, on instinct, he jerks away, blinking rapidly against eyelids that feel too heavy for his face, but _that_ immediately proves to be a _bad fucking idea_ as the claws of something sink back into him and _twist_ , seizing his lungs down at their base and crawling back up to his throat.

he's not sure if anything even comes up this time.

"get over here, help me move him," the same voice, just as soft and firm but closer, as confident as the fingers that no longer prod as his but brace under his opposite side, other pairs of hands and fingernails soon digging into his skin until he's reluctantly unfolded from the floor.

cement, dust, vanilla, increases until he cracks open an eyelid to see pinpricks of fire scattered around the new space, fire, flickering, candles littered almost carelessly like leftover takeout boxes on Friday nights.

"careful, here, set him down," and those sure hands disappear only to be compensated for by a cushion beneath him, stiff and loud and creaking but not as much as his joints seem to as he bends to accommodate it, or it bends to accommodate him. either way, he finds himself taking quick, short bursts of breath to keep up with all the movement, the change in position – _he doesn't like it,_ _holy shit –_

so he doubles over instead, forehead to knees, and breathes long and deep through his nose for a change.

he smells like blood and piss.

the burning spreads from his stomach to his eyes, of all places. a higher pitched sort of grunt, breathy, a gasp on a cough instead of an exhale, like he can't quite catch his breath but he _can,_ and he realizes for a second time that strange noises are coming from him instead of his environment.

 _he wants his dad._

he wonders if there are rats down here.

there was a rat in his solitary cell, able to come and go as it pleased. teasing him. _taunting_ him –

"Archie?"

"i'm okay," jumps from his tongue without consent, some sort of feral instinct, to stay composed, controlled, he _is_ okay, as if to get them to back off, _go away, go away,_ yet he wants nothing more than that voice to sound closer than it was before. keep him from floating away back to that cell, that rat.

"not so much, Red."

Red. _Red._ Jughead.

"Archie, we need you to sit up, okay?"

 _Betty,_ that's Betty.

he blinks his eyes open to more cement floor, breaths huffing not very slow but deep due to his awkward position. he sees... too many pairs of shoes to count.

he suddenly feels exposed.

a bug under a microscope.

a rat, a lab rat, nothing but an experiment, nothing but an animal, _branded like a fucking animal –_

"Archie, baby, we need you to _sit up,_ " and there she is, all sharp angles and soft eyes, small hands suddenly cupping his face, Veronica, _focus._ he nods. sit up. _sit up._

he nods, and ever so carefully sits back upright. everything pulls and creaks like he's taken a year long nap even though he _knows_ it can't have been more than a few minutes at most, and he grits his teeth to keep all the noises clattering at the back of his throat right where they are instead of spilling out over his lips.

 _breathe._

he wants to _sleep._

 _dad,_ he _wants_ his _dad –_

"i'm so fucking tired," he manages to say, but it comes out as more of a whisper, his eyelids slipping closed of their own accord.

"not so fast, Red," _not_ Jughead, but the nice voice, the soft and firm and steady one, and he catches his ears tuning into her words quicker than before. "let me take a look at what's got you forever ruining all these sheets first and then maybe you can get your beauty sleep, how's that sound?"

 _Toni._ it's Toni.

a frown and a squint and he finally seems to notice Cheryl hovering no less than two feet away from them.

she gives him that cracked porcelain sort of smile that she always seems to have on hand and he gives his own broken flash of teeth in return.

"just maybe?" he eventually says.

"just maybe," she repeats, her lips quirking up at the corners, and he finds himself relaxing more into the shitty mattress by the second. "let's get this off of you first." she tugs at the hem of his shirt. "it's not gonna be fun but i need to be able to examine you properly, isn't that right, Archie?"

a beat, and he's not sure why she's asking him that, but he nods nonetheless.

fuzzy corners sharpen only just.

"yeah, yeah, i..." but he trails off as he realizes his predicament; both hands dutifully pressing down on his side, effectively trapping his shirt on his body until otherwise maneuvered. he presses his lips together and belatedly realizes they're trembling.

he's honestly scared to move, to disturb even the slightest of band of skin, muscle, bone, tissue, they'll turn themselves inside out and upside down again and he's not too trilled at the possibility.

the room phases in and out at the edges.

"we'll do it quick," she's saying, gesturing for someone and two people are flanking him at his sides, "move your hands when i tell you and they'll pull it off quick, like a band-aid."

something thick like panic swells at the base of his neck, but he nods anyway.

she locks her eyes with his for a moment long enough he knows she has his attention, and then offers a terse nod of her own.

and then he un-glues his hands from his side for what feels like the first time in hours and the rush of air to hit the wound and then his bare torso has him grimacing, teeth grinding together as his jaw ticks and winds and tightens until he's worried he'll chip something if he keeps holding his breath.

a hand on his back and he remembers to breathe.

whoever helped him with his shirt; a quick glance reveals Sweet Pea and Fangs, of all people. not who he expected, but he thinks of dark roads and cold adrenaline and guns and knives and thinks they've probably dealt with things like this before.

"somebody get me some water?"

the stiff, creaky mattress feels a lot more inviting than it did before, cool and soft to the burning heat in his skin, a contrast to the goosebumps rippling across his body in a wave that washes all the way down to his toes, leaving a tang of something on his tongue and a tense coil to his body.

when lukewarm liquid drips down from his shoulder to his waistband, he shivers harder.

"jesus, what is all this?" somebody asks, voice somewhat warped in something akin to disgust but familiar enough for Archie to pin on Fangs.

"there... there was a –" he stops to simply breathe, eyes squeezed shut in concentration on both not shying away from the rag being wrung out over his body and basic recall of what he'd been doing not twenty minutes ago. "a drain? under the pit – the fighting ring, to clean all the blood afterward."

he hears more than sees everyone's micro-expressions in response.

"i crawled out through there. the fence idea didn't really pan out as well as this one, but at least i didn't smell like _this._ "

he's not sure how he's joking in a situation like this, but Toni snorts nonetheless. "that's fucking disgusting."

" _fighting ring – ?"_ but he makes out a small sound from Betty and a quick 'we'll explain later' from Veronica that stops Jughead's line of questioning short. he's not sure if he's disappointed or relieved, but something small and heavy settles against his chest as a result, not hurting but at least somewhat distracting from the waning throb in his side. he doesn't notice he's reclined back until Toni's face reappears overhead.

"this is gonna hurt, okay? i need to clean some of the debris that a quick rinsing couldn't take care of," the last part is a statement, but it looks more like a question in her eyes, waiting for something, for _him,_ so he bites the inside of his cheek and nods, the waning throb quickly rocketing to a drumbeat burn at the renewed regard.

a cold hand touches his right ribcage; a warning.

he braces. and the rag presses at the wound itself this time – he can _feel_ it catch on the ridge of skin, the slit in his flesh that goes inches deep, and he hisses in deep to the back of his lungs in an attempt to quell any alternative outbursts, but a stiff grunt still slithers its way past his defenses.

he bites down harder on the inside of his cheek until it, too, bleeds.

"shit," she mutters, perhaps to herself, perhaps to someone else, but she keeps up her ministrations until Archie decides it best to focus on his breathing once more since it doesn't feel like she'll be letting up anytime soon. "sorry, there's just... a lot of crap in there."

a hand burrows its way into his own and he clings to it.

"this might need stitches."

something somewhere in his body sinks all the way down to his toes.

" _whoa,_ hey, breathe, Arch," and he doesn't realize the room feels like it's spinning until Jughead's words break through the fog, swirling down into his ears like a clogged drain until he forces his eyes open to find him. his eyes are dark, almost sad, imploring, the shadows jumping out to play with the candlelight reflecting off of them for the briefest of moments before Toni's face vies for his attention.

"i won't make you go through that but i might be your only option unless you really want to chance a hospital."

the bed keeps pulsing beneath him like a tilt-a-whirl but it's slowing with each quick blink of his eyes and re-calibration of his body – toes, ankles, knees, skip the hips straight to his shoulders, down to his elbows, wrists and fingers, shifting and moving against whatever itchy blanket's keeping all of his blood off the floor.

how long has he been bleeding?

 _breathe._

"... _no,_ no, i – no, my dad couldn't afford it even if i wasn't a... fugitive," the last word comes out like a puzzle he's not sure he wants to solve, ridding it from his tongue with a short swallow. " _fuck._ "

is he gonna get fucking stitches in some fucking cave from a sixteen-year-old instead of a trained fucking professional all because – _because..._

he doesn't want to think about what the first domino to cause this series of unfortunate events was.

 _'unfortunate'._

"fuck, you know how to do that?" he breathes out on an exhale, cracking an eye open to peer at Toni.

she half-shrugs, nods, not unsure of herself but like she could think of a million different options that were preferable to this one. like going to an actual hospital. _fuck._ "i know somebody who's better at it than i am, though. someone we might have to call anyway if that thing gets infected, which..."

 _it looks like it might,_ his mind supplies.

"i mean, it might not; i cleaned it as best i can, but..." she purses her lips. "i'd rather be safe. infection isn't something to mess around with." as though punctuating her sentence, Jughead sighs, looking somewhere over on the other side of the room, and Toni cranes her neck to face him. "your dad's been patching people up with a lot less for a lot longer than i have, Jones."

Jughead only nods after the briefest of moments.

"okay... i'll put some ointment on it and patch you up right now, but if you're not going to the hospital, it'd do you good to rest as much as you can until we can get a hold of F.P." she works as she speaks, little knocks and clicks accompanying her words as she digs through what Archie assumes is a first aid kit.

Veronica squeezes his hand.

he closes his eyes and tries to remember the last time he wasn't scared for his or someone elses' life.

a picnic at Sweet-water River almost eagerly buoys to the surface, but he's quick to push it right back down into the murky depths where he hopes it drowns forever.

"Archie?" a hesitant sound but it has him jolting back to the land of the living as if he's been struck, eyelids peeling open to locate the source of the voice – Betty, poised as if she's just taken a small step closer, her own eyes big and green and sad and he feels that small, heavy something squirm.

it feels as though the cushion itself is drawing him deeper against it, heavy, _heavy_ but he forces his mind to clear.

"i'm okay," he says quietly, an echo of the statement before except this time he's not choking on his own lungs.

her face softens.

"i'll call my dad," Jughead murmurs, but doesn't make any move to do so, locked into place like a statue but warmer, softer, like Veronica's hand squeezing his until he's ready to let go.

something cool and soft presses into his side and for once he doesn't struggle not to flinch away, his head cloudy and far, far away, but still lax on his shoulders, Toni's hands careful and light as she applies the bandage to his skin.

"there; you are all patched up." something like a smile flits across her features. "now don't make any sudden movements."

he smiles.

"i won't. thanks Toni."

as she retreats, he finally seems to notice everyone who's actually there – legitimately almost _everyone,_ minus only the perhaps most important two – _he wants his fucking mom and dad_ – but...

if he didn't just nearly fucking bleed out courtesy of a stab wound he got because of a two year sentence of juvie for a murder he didn't commit yet still pleaded guilty for anyway, he'd almost be more content than he has been since that single fucking picnic at Sweet-water River.

000

 **A/N:** **thank you? so much for reading my garbage, fr? ily ! please leave a review telling me whatcha think, or anything, really, i'm an attention whore xoxo. but really, thank you any and all who actually? read my fics? y'all the realest and i would die for you 3**

 **if you want to reach me elsewhere, you can find me at jarchiekinz on tumblr**


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